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Week 16 
Milestones: I can't believe how big this baby is getting! Baby is now 12cm CRL (about 5"), and weighs about 3 oz. As I told Harmony this week, she/he is bigger than our little pet hamster Snowy. No wonder I can feel those little wiggles more and more now. Apparently, the baby is also now blinking and sucking his/her thumb! My Journal: This pregnancy becomes more and more "real" to me day by day, and I find that I'm finally (little by little!) letting myself get attached to this tiny person growing inside me. Last night, I was telling Harmony and Paul about how the baby would be able to hear in a little while and that we would be reading stories and singing songs and talking to him/her so that even right after birth, the baby would already know who's in this little family! One of the things that is helping me to bond with the baby (which I admit is still a little more difficult this pregnancy) is all those little wiggles and flutters I've been feeling. I don't get to feel the baby moving around very often at this stage (at that size, he/she really has to be pointed in the right direction and moving around a lot to be noticeable), but I'd say I get to feel a handful of wiggles over a short period of time (maybe 5-10 minutes) every few days. Sometimes I doubt what I'm feeling because the "average" time of starting to feel movements of the fetus is around 18 weeks (but that's for first time mothers anyways), but at other times I wonder how I could possibly not feel more movements when I think about how big the baby is now! There have been enough times though, that I've felt movements that could only be the baby and nothing else, so that's reassured me that it really is my little one in there (some sensations are vaguely familiar from my pregnancy with Harmony). A couple times I have even felt a funny little "flip" sensation, like maybe the baby was turning right around in there or just had a quick jumping-type movement! It is so amazing to think of how much my baby can already feel and move and do, and I'm absolutely in awe sometimes of being blessed with being to one to carry this little life around inside me. One of the many things I love about being pregnant is just that amazingly "magical" feeling, like you are doing something so wonderful and sacred. I'm getting to enjoy a lot of other happy moments with this pregnancy, like thinking about my little one and planning for his/her arrival. Paul and I are making a little progress with the (suprisingly tricky!) task of finding names for this baby, and we're starting to make plans for what will happen when the baby comes. He has access to some paternal leave at his work, so we've talked a little about how long he might take off (probably at least 2-4 weeks), and we've also asked Paul's mom Kathryn if she would be willing to be on "standby" to have Harmony come to sleepover at her house when he and I need to rush off to the hospital! It feels so nice to be able to make all these plans with the knowledge that they are all going to actually happen this time around. I've also noticed this change in the way other people are asking and talking about the pregnancy - of course everyone still says "How are you feeling?", but it's with less of a worried tone. I get the sense they are now asking more about how the pregnancy is going, not trying to find a way of asking "So are you still pregnant? Is everything still okay?". And people are talking about more concrete things, in more definite terms, like saying "When the baby comes, will you...?" I love that so many people are already interested in this little one and are treating her/him like a little person joining our family (which he/she is!). Overall, it's been an extremely positive week for me. I still have moments of feeling nauseous or tired or emotional, etc. but overall, I find my general mood is getting a lot better. I'm feeling more energetic and optimistic. And mostly, I'm feeling so much more healthy! One of my friends told me I was looking really healthy and beautiful and shared a saying with me along the lines of "When a woman's having a boy, she keeps her beauty, but when a woman's having a girl, the daughter steals the mother's beauty to be beautiful herself" so that was a nice compliment. And also - add one more person to the growing list of people that are so sure I'm having a boy! We'll have to wait another month to find out for sure though. My grandma is also going to be taking me shopping this week for a new dress (I have a wedding to attend this weekend and none of my dresses quite fit right!), so I am really happy about that too, I love being able to wear maternity clothes and actually start to be able to fill them out. On the other hand, I've still had a couple people react with surprise when I told them I was pregnant, even though they've seen me in maternity clothes! So I guess I still don't look "without a doubt" pregnant yet. Test Results/Ultrasounds/Appointments: I have my next appt. coming up on Thursday, and will get to have my blood test results back (to see if I'm anemic, etc.), and will also get to hear the heartbeat with the doppler! It's been in the 130s and in thr 140s before, so I think it will probably be somewhere around there again. I'm sure it will be much easier to find now since the baby is so much bigger! Big ultrasound appt. is only one month away now! Can't wait to see how the baby is doing and all those features that are much more baby-like, little head and spine! I hope everything is developping perfectly and the baby is healthy! Physical: I've been feeling quite well this week, not too sick or tired. I am finding that the heat really bothers me though, especially when it's humid - I just get dragged down easily by it, so I'm trying to be sure to keep cool and keep drinking water, etc. I really feel air conditioning is such a plus when you're pregnant in the summer! I've had another couple headaches, but i'm beginning to wonder if they are caused by the heat, because almost all of my headaches/migraines have been when I'm out-and-about (in the car or hot sun) or when I've been over at someone's house and they didn't have the air on. I was over at my mother's place this week and the temperature in the house was 27 degrees C (no air on, no good breeze), so no wonder I had a headache that afternoon. Another symptom besides the headaches has been insomnia. Whether it's tossing and turning a little bit longer before bed or getting up too early in the morning, it's so frustrating when I can't seem to get to or stay asleep! This wouldn't bother me so much except for the fact that it was a common symptom in my last three pregnancies, especially at times when they weren't going well. This pregnancy has been so different from those last few pregnancies, and I've actually been really thankful for that, because I have taken it as a sign that it means things will go well. So when similar symptoms crop up, it makes me worry about how this baby is doing - he/she is supposed to be my lucky one and I'm determined to keep it that way! I know I'm just being overly worried about it (insomnia is not a sign of miscarriage), but at this point, I'm still not "out of the woods" enough to be comfortable with having symptoms appear that remind me of the pregnancies I lost. On a positive note, the morning sickness is almost completely gone - I feel nauseous on the odd morning, but never any other time and it's not very serious. As for the tiredness, it is still lingering a little bit, and I've had a couple evening naps, but during the daytime I'm not feeling nearly as exhausted as I did during the first trimester. Weight Gain/Food: Believe it or not, I'm actually down a few pounds, making the total weight gain for the pregnancy at only 4lbs! Hmmm, I guess that aquafit has more benefits than being energetic - I am happy that I'm meeting my goal of a maintaining a low weight-gain as much as possible. As for food, I'm glad the benefit of my recent interest in prenatal aquafit has compensated for my recent interest in french fries! One time I found myself craving salty french fries for most of the day and only caved when I had to pass a Wendy's on the way to pick Paul up from work. I think it was more the salt I was craving than the fries because I had more than usual and it didn't make me feel sick or anything like that amount of salt normally would. But I'm hoping my body got it's salt "fix" because fries would not be a healthy thing to continue craving! Emotional: Yikes, can you say "space case"? There are times I feel like I'm operating on auto-pilot and even my auto-pilot is affected by preggo-brain! I had a very spacey week, which included driving through a red light - in our quiet neighbourhood, it is very rarely red because the side street and crosswalk aren't popular crossings, so my auto-pilot assumed it was green as usual! I felt so bad about it, but thank God there were no other cars or people crossing at that time, I must've just missed the yellow. When they compare preggo-brain driving to "driving under the influence", I guess they are right on that one! Well, I was hoping those grumpy feelings would up and leave, but I find I'm still irritated by a lot of things. Even little things I notice can bother me for days. I just don't have the same patience levels as before, but I'm just trying to keep things as calm as possible and try to think more ahead into the future - like, in 20 years, how much will it matter that we were 5 minutes late for one swim class out of the whole summer? So this helps me remember to just take a deep breath and take it one thing at a time.
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